Here are our thoughts and impressions on how well the new version performs, plus the top reasons you’d want to buy one over the old Google Nexus 7 2012 version.

1. 7-inch, 1080p screen

The first thing that strikes you is the new display. It’s gorgeous and oozes detail. Google boasts this is the highest pixels-per-inch 7-inch tablet on the planet.

The old Nexus 7 had a decent 1280×800 display but it has nothing on this new model.

Day-to-day you probably think it won’t change your life, but it makes text sharper and easier to read. You can browse a full web page more easily than on a desktop and 1080p movies or high-res photos look even more stunning.

2. Stereo speakers

We’re placing this high up the list as almost all tablets have dreadful mono-speakers. The new Google Nexus 7 actually makes it possible to watch a film with virtual surround from the built in stereo speakers and sound good. It will, of course, never replace a good home cinema system, but it adds an extra level of enjoyment all the others miss.

3. Rear & front camera

An omission from the original was a decent rear camera. Now, we’re not fans of tablet photography, you look silly and you’re better off using a dedicated camera. But it’s always handy to have around and enables 1080p video capture, which will all be uploaded to your Google+ account.

4. Faster with more memory

The old Nexus 7 with its Tegra 3 processor was no slouch at 1.2GHz. The new Nexus 7 (2013) is equipped with an even faster Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor running at 1.5GHz with Adreno 320 graphics core.

Some benchmarks have the new version up to twice as fast on processing and up to four times faster with graphics. It also comes with 2GB of memory over the old one’s 1GB, which will help future-proof it and provide enhanced multitasking.

5. Qi wireless charging

The new Nexus 7 may come with a super-fast wired charger, but it also supports the standard Qi wireless charging system. This enables you to buy a charging pad and just place the device on top of it to charge. The best news is, as the Qi standard is being adopted by more and more devices, it’s likely you’ll be able to charge future phones and tablets with it too.

6. Better battery life

Oddly the new Nexus 7 comes with a smaller battery, 3950mAh against the older 4325mAh capacity, but even so will last longer. The old Nexus 7, while having a decent battery life, always suffered with wireless and heavy processor use.

The new Nexus 7 seems already, after just a short day’s play, to be far better with wireless use. Google is claiming 10 hours of web browsing and 9 hours of HD playback and we believe them.

7. Notification LED

A problem with the old Nexus 7 was knowing when it was trying to tell you something if the screen was off. It could bing and bong at you, but not if you had turned sound notifications off. The new model includes a white LED for notifications, which is jolly handy.

8. HDMI output

Finally, you can connect your Nexus 7 directly to an HDTV via the USB port using a special cable called a SlimPort. This will make it possible to use the Nexus 7 as a media centre streaming YouTube, films, iPlayer and other content off the tablet on to your TV.

9. Dual-band Wi-Fi

This is a technical point for tech-heads, the new model offers 2.4GHz and 5GHz networking. This isn’t anything new, the Amazon Kindle Fire and Apple iPad 2 have had this for ages, but it was missing on the old Nexus 7. The new Nexus 7 finally support 2×2 5GHz wireless for increased speeds and full wireless compatibility.

10. Android 4.3

Last but not least, the new Nexus 7 ships with Android 4.3 as standard. Now, the old Nexus 7 will be getting an upgrade too so we can’t really class it as an advantage, but here we are putting it down in the list of improvements…